In Low-Lying Bangladesh, The Sea Takes a Human Toll

Danish photographer and filmmaker Jonathan Bjerg Møller recently spent nine months in Bangladesh, chronicling the lives of people struggling to survive just a few feet above sea level. He traveled to the South Asian nation after hearing projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the millions of climate refugees that would be created this century by rising seas and more powerful storms. Møller wanted to put a human face on this issue, and decided there was no better place than Bangladesh, where 15 million of its 160 million people live less than three feet above sea level.

While he was in Bangladesh, Cyclone Aila struck, killing roughly 200 people and leaving thousands homeless. Møller proceeded to document the devastation from that 2009 storm, as well the impact of subsiding land and rising seas on other Bangladeshis, many of whom earn less than $1 a day. In this Yale Environment 360 report, we present two videos by Møller – “Aila’s Victims” and “Wahidul’s Story.”

Møller says he will leave it up to scientists to determine how much of the suffering he portrays is related to a warming climate. “I am not a scientist and I know that global warming is a contentious issue,” he says. “I wanted to focus on the people who are suffering today. The point is that these people are vulnerable today, and will become even more vulnerable in the future.”

A Bangladeshi man who is the subject of one of his videos, Wahidul, lives in the town of Kuziartek, which was once home to 40,000 people. Now, the island on which Kuziartek was located is underwater. All that is left of Kuziartek is a small embankment rising from the sea, 2 ½ miles out in the Bay of Bengal. Seven families remain there, including Wahidul’s, clinging to a disappearing strip of earth.

“But what can we do,” asks Wahidul, fearful that abandoning his village would leave him homeless in a city slum. “We have an unfortunate fate. There are many people in the world, but I doubt that anyone must suffer as much as me. People shouldn't live where we live, but we have no choice. We have to live here.”

See his videos here

Stronger controls urged on chemicals in water

Citing the decline in frogs and rise of "frankenfish," a Bay Area environmental group filed a legal petition Monday for tighter federal standards on pollutants that disrupt the hormones of humans and wildlife.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Environmental Agency to beef up criteria under the Clean Water Act for pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other endocrine disruptors that leak through the water-treatment process and contaminate groundwater and drinking-water supplies.

"We've found that a very small concentration of these chemicals can have profound reproductive effects," said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco.

Over the past two decades or so, scientists have found increasing amounts of endocrine disruptors in the groundwater, and they have seen corresponding effects in wildlife, particularly frogs, fish and other aquatic animals. Almost every native frog species in California is threatened, and scientists are finding fish with both male and female characteristics, Miller said.

The chemicals are found in dozens of household and industrial products, including sunscreen, birth control pills, herbicides, antibiotics, bug spray and painkillers. Miller's organization says the chemicals interfere with hormone production in people and wildlife, leading to infertility, birth defects and other problems.

The EPA, under the new administration, has recently launched several programs to look more closely at endocrine disruptors and other water pollutants, said Betsaida Alcantara, EPA deputy press secretary.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has called for a comprehensive overhaul of federal toxics laws, which could include tighter restrictions on endocrine disruptors, Alcantara said.

more from the SF Chronicle

Tests find antibiotic, other contaminants in Tampa's drinking water

The tap water that Tampa residents consume is contaminated with low levels of antibiotics, nicotine byproducts and a chemical used to produce firefighting foams.

City and state officials say the levels of the contaminants – found in recent tests of the city's drinking water system – are miniscule and that the city's water is safe to drink.

But the presence of the contaminants raises questions about what is coming out of the faucets in tens of thousands of households served by the city's water system.

State and federal environmental regulators say they know little about possible health risks from the cocktail of contaminants that in recent years have been found in water supplies across the country. They are only beginning to study the long-term effects.

Without any regulation of these types of contaminants, the city isn't required to report the findings of the recent tests to state and local environmental regulators, or the public.

Elias Franco, distribution division manager for Tampa's water department, said the city began voluntarily testing its water for pharmaceutical contaminants two years ago.

He said the contaminants found in tests conducted in May 2009 include the antibiotic drug sulfamethoxzole; cotinine, a nicotine byproduct; and perfluorooctane sulphonate, a chemical commonly used for metal plating, photography and firefighting foams.

The contaminants were found in samples of treated drinking water taken from the city's treatment plant, indicating that the existing filtration process doesn't remove them.

Franco said the city meets all federal and state regulations for drinking water quality and, for now, doesn't intend to make any wholesale changes to the water treatment system.

more from the Tampa Tribune

California's groundwater shrinking because of agricultural use

New data from satellites show the vast underground pools feeding faucets and irrigation hoses across California are running low, a worrisome trend federal scientists largely attribute to aggressive agricultural pumping.

The measurements show the amount of water lost in the two main Central Valley river basins within the past six years could almost fill the nation's largest reservoir, Lake Mead in Nevada.

"All that water has been sucked from these river basins. It's gone. It's left the building," says Jay Famiglietti, an earth science professor at the University of California, Irvine, who led the research collaboration. "The data is telling us that this rate of pumping is not sustainable."

Hundreds of farmers have been drilling wells to irrigate their crops, as three years of drought and environmental restrictions on water supplies have withered crops, jobs and profits throughout the San Joaquin Valley, where roughly half of the nation's fruits, nuts, and vegetables are grown.

Developers and cities dependent on the tight supplies also have joined the well-drilling frenzy as the crisis has deepened.

NASA scientists and researchers from UC Irvine presented their findings at a recent conference, showcasing data from twin satellites that pick up changes in the aquifers coursing underneath the state.

The NASA mission represents the first attempt to use space-based technology to measure how much groundwater has been lost in recent years in California and elsewhere in the world.

From October 2003 through March of this year, Mr. Famiglietti and his team tracked how Earth's gravitational pull on the satellites changed as the amount of water stored in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins dried up.

more from the CS Monitor